The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

Like that roommate who constantly tries to spoil your romantic mood with your significant other — and then swoops in to flirt the second you have your back turned — Comcast put one Consumerist reader in a bad position with his client and then had the gall to try to lure that same client away.

Marc is an IT consultant who recently referred one of his clients to Comcast for Internet access. Since the client was moving into a new office space, all new data wiring was required.

“Comcast initially agreed to do all the data wiring in the new office, and even provided me with a quote for the cost,” Marc tells Consumerist.

But a few weeks later, shortly before the client was to move into the new office space — and right before Comcast was scheduled to run the new wiring, Marc says the folks at Kabletown backed out.

This left Marc scrambling to find a new company to run the data wires, which could mean a higher price to his client just to get it all done in time.

At first, Comcast seemed apologetic and offered to provide the actual data cabling for the job, which would offset the cost of the wiring. But Marc says that never happened.

“7–8 months later I’m still dealing with them trying to get them to provide some sort of reimbursement for their ‘promise,'” says Marc.

After all of this, one would expect Comcast to merely fade into the background and be happy to still have a customer. Then a few weeks ago, Comcast sent an e-mail addressed to the client — but which was accidentally sent to him — in which they specifically advertised IT/tech support services to the very clients whose job they screwed up royally.

We’ve pointed Marc toward some folks at Comcast who might be able to help resolve the whole cabling reimbursement thing, but we figured his story was worth sharing so that others in the IT consulting business were aware that Comcast could be trying to poach their clients.